Current situation

On 27 December 2008, Israeli F-16 strike fighters launched a series of air strikes against targets in Gaza. Struck were militant bases, a mosque, various Hamas government buildings, a science building in the Islamic University, and a U.N.-operated elementary school in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Some strikes against Hamas have resulted in civilian casualties. Israel claimed that the attack was a response to Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, which totaled over 3,000 in 2008, and which intensified during the few weeks preceding the operation. News reports, however, indicated that Israel was preparing for the attack even as it was negotiating a cease-fire with Hamas six months earlier, expiring in December, 2008. UN and Palestinian medical staff said at least 434 Palestinians were killed, and at least 2,800 wounded, including Hamas militants and civilians, in the first five days of Israeli strikes on Gaza. Israel began a ground invasion of the Gaza strip on 3 January, 2009. Israel and Hamas have rejected diplomatic initiatives for a negotiated cease-fire.

In total more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the 22-day war.

After 22 days of fighting, Israel agreed to a unilateral cease-fire while insisting on holding its positions, while Hamas has vowed to fight on if Israeli forces do not leave the Strip.

Concentration camp comparisons

The Gaza Strip conditions were said to be approaching those of a concentration camp by a representative of Vatican City and by Pat Buchanan. Cardinal Renato Martino, a representative of Vatican City who attracted attention in 2003 when he accused U.S. troops of treating captured Saddam Hussein "like a cow," and who said he felt "pity" and "compassion" for Hussein, speaking on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict said that "Look at the conditions in Gaza -- more and more, it resembles a huge concentration camp." In response to this the Israeli government said that Cardinal Martino had swallowed "'Hamas propaganda," and invited him to reflect and apologize for his inflammatory statement. In an interview on "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Patrick Buchanan also accused Israel of turning Gaza into a "concentration camp," while British Member of Parliament George Galloway and British artist Brian Eno compared it to the World War II Warsaw Ghetto where Jews were being held before sending them to extermination camps under Nazi rule. Galloway compared the resistance of the democratically elected Hamas government against the Israeli ocuppying forces to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 where Jewish resistance fighters fought against the Nazi occupying forces in the streets, alleys, and sewers of the Ghetto.